Hi all,
Sorry for this lengthy post – it just seemed to keep growing. Hopefully someone heading out to the NSW Corner Counter will find it interesting, and perhaps a little helpful.
What a fantastic country we live in, full of beautiful landscapes and interesting characters. The family and I are just back from our first “real” Outback tour – 2 weeks in the NSW
Corner Country.
We started out by spoiling ourselves with 2 nights at PJ’s Underground B&B at
White Cliffs. Peter and Joanne’s hospitality is second to none, if you don’t mind spending the money, I highly recommend staying a night at there. We did the infamous tour of Jock’s dugout (what a character) and played pool with the kids (Ben 4 and Sarah 8) at the
White Cliffs Pub. Also did a tour of Parker’s dugout, and visited some of the opal showrooms. Our only mechanical incident happened here, one of the wheel bearing on the camper trailer (Trak Shak) went. I was prudent enough to have a spare set, and a retired mechanic (Bert – many thanks if you ever read this) was good enough to fit them.
We then moved on to Milparika, this little place proved to be quite a surprise. The kids enjoyed the
turtle swimming around in a pond inside the pub, we also enjoyed going through some of the old buildings that had been restored. The courthouse was particularly impressive – with my daughter sentencing me to 10 years for horse theft. Visited
Depot Glen, Poole’s Grave and Sturts Cairn – a bit of a history lesson. We camped by Evelyn
Creek and the kids enjoyed the first campfire of the trip (firebugs).
Next was
Tibooburra, where we met fellow ExplorOz member Helena B. – we had a good chat around the campfire on what was a pretty cold night. The National Parks office is full of good information, and has a very interesting display of the native wildlife – the kids were able to pickup and look closely at jars containing snakes, spiders and rodents. It also has the original
Cameron Corner Post. There is a
park at the end of town with a replica of Sturts boat, he was convinced of an inland sea, but of course never found one. There are also sections of the pipe used to carry natural gas from Moomba to the East Coast, nearly 3 feet in diameter!
Left
Tibooburra and went in to
Sturt National Park, struck by the number of gibber rocks and the mostly flat landscape in the eastern/middle sections – this turned to gently rolling red sand hills towards the west.. We did
the Gorge and Jump-up Loop roads and stayed at
Olive Downs Campground – all campgrounds have good, modern and clean amenities. The old sheering shed at Mt. Wood and the pastoralist historic site are
well worth a visit. Oh yes – no campfires in the National
Park. We were lucky enough to see a Wedge Tail Eagle eating its’ dinner (road-kill kangaroo) only about 10m from the roadside – very impressive size and strength.
Did a day trip to
Cameron Corner, it seamed a little strange that after a fair amount of planning we had actually made it to the “Corner”. The kids were rather amused that they could be in 3 states at the same time. Everyone at the Corner Pub was friendly and welcoming. Although we didn’t need any, diesel was $1.80. The
dingo fence was impressive – 5500km of continuous fence!
Drove from there back to
Tibooburra – probably one of the most serene and peaceful moments of the trip; driving along the flat gibber plains with the red sun setting behind us, and a full moon in a blue/
grey sky in front of us – very memorable.
The next port of call was Mutawinji National
Park. Along the way we came across several emus, we took the obligatory photos and then drove off, as we did one of the emus started running next to the truck (about 30m away) as if racing us. The kids nearly wet themselves laughing as this continued for about 300m – in the end the Nissan won (by a long neck – sorry!) We did the guided tour of the aboriginal art, amazing pictures and hand prints – several thousand’s of years old. Also did a couple of walks in the gorges, incredible contrasts, the gorges were lush, green and had
rock pools, whilst the surround areas were sparse and dry. The walks were fairly easy, and the kids were rewarded with wetting their feet in the
rock pools.
Our last stopover was in
Broken Hill, unfortunately our good luck with the weather ended and it rained for the 2 nights. Lucky we were not in the “bush”, otherwise we might still be there! I’m pretty sure all the roads in the area were closed. As neighbours in the caravan
park, we had fellow ExplorOz member Burto (aka Greg and Louise). A good time was had chatting to the
well travelled Burto, he was also able to recommend a few things to do and see in
Broken Hill such as the Big Picture, several art galleries, and the chocolate factory (the kids were in heaven). Unfortunately due to the rain the road out to the
mine at
Silverton was close, maybe next time.
So in summary we had a great time, everyone we met was friendly and welcoming (especially the ExplorOz guys), the countryside was harsh but stunning and the weather for the most part was on our side. Only thing left to do is plan the next trip.
Some websites that we found useful;
www.outbacknsw.com.au/index.htm
Site Link
www.visitbrokenhill.com.au/afrontpage.asp
" target="EOF" class="lbg">www.mynrma.com.au/travel_planner.asp
www.babs.com.au/pj/
Cheers,
Jezza
!MPG:16!